EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 10 © 2015 Book Palace Books (96 PAGES in Full edition)

40 the miniature 17th century helmet perched on a shelf. I recognised it at once as forming part of the frontispiece that Pat had drawn for the Thriller Comics version of R. D. Blackmore’s ‘Lorna Doone’. He was delighted that I recognised an artefact that he had used in his work and it was the catalyst for him to begin to reminisce about his life and work, somuch of it connected with arms and armour. Patrick Nicolle was born in Hampstead, London, in November 1907. While he was still a fairly young child his family moved to Birmingham where, as Pat put it, 'they hoped tomake their fortune '. But events intervened. Pat’s father served in the First World War and Birmingham proved not to be the Mecca they hoped for. The family returned to London in 1921—alas, without any sign of the sought after fortune! Pat was always of a strong, sturdy, muscular build and, with a wry smile he informed us that at school he was good at only two things: drawing and playing rugby football—and rugby always came first. Whatever the truth of that statement, it is an undeniable fact that it was some time after leaving school before Pat settled on drawing as his life’s vocation. For a period of about five years he had an assortment of jobs. First he worked in his uncle’s paper warehouse and then he became an office boy to the nine-stone champion weight lifter, W.A. Pullam, who also published a health magazine. Later Pat became an office boy at Oxford University Press and afterwards at British Books, Ludgate Hill. In those days, he said, he had a fiery temper that often got him into trouble and he was 'expelled ' from British Books. ABOVE: Illustrations of King Henry VI and a Knights Templar from Look and Learn , revealing more of Nicolle's unerring ability to invest his figures and props with a level of historical credibilty, which eluded most of his contemporaries.